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Developing NetBox Plugin – Part 4 – Small improvements

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Worth Reading: Visualizing BGP-LS Tables

When I’d first seen BGP-LS I immediately thought: “it would be cool to use this to fetch link state topology data from the network and build a graph out of it”. In those days the only open-source way I could find to do it involved Open DayLight controller’s BGP-LS-to-REST-API converter, and that felt like deploying an aircraft carrier to fly a kite.

Things have improved dramatically since then. In Visualizing BGP-LS Tables, HB described how he solved the challenge with GoBGP, gRPC interface to GoBGP, and some Python code to parse the data and draw the topology graph with NetworkX. Enjoy!

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Worth Reading: Visualizing BGP-LS Tables

When I’d first seen BGP-LS I immediately thought: “it would be cool to use this to fetch link state topology data from the network and build a graph out of it”. In those days the only open-source way I could find to do it involved Open DayLight controller’s BGP-LS-to-REST-API converter, and that felt like deploying an aircraft carrier to fly a kite.

Things have improved dramatically since then. In Visualizing BGP-LS Tables, HB described how he solved the challenge with GoBGP, gRPC interface to GoBGP, and some Python code to parse the data and draw the topology graph with NetworkX. Enjoy!

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An IPv6 Update for 2020

The common theme of many of reviews of the Internet in 2020 has been that the Internet has been used to plug the gap caused by shutting down many of our physical venues where we previously worked and played. No matter what aspect of the Internet you look at, its clear that we all made much more use of the Internet this year. Here I would like to ask the inevitable IPv6 question: What role did IPv6 play in 2020?

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Juniper to Mikrotik – MPLS Commands

About the Juniper to MikroTik series

In the world of network engineering, learning a new syntax for a NOS can be daunting if you need a specific config quickly.  Juniper is a popular option for service providers/data centers and is widely deployed across the world. 

This is a continuation of the Rosetta stone for network operating systems series.  In this article we will be covering multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) using label distribution protocol (LDP). We are sticking with LDP as MikroTik does not have wide support for RSVP-TE.

You can find the first two articles of the series here:

Juniper to MikroTik – BGP commands

Juniper to MikroTik – OSPF commands

While many commands have almost the exact same information, others are as close as possible.  Since there isn’t always an exact match, sometimes you may have to run two or three commands to get the information needed. 

Using EVE-NG for testing

We conducted utilized EVE-NG for all of the testing with the topology seen below.

Juniper Command	MikroTik Command
show ldp neighbor	mpls ldp neighbor print
show ldp interface	mpls ldp interface print
show route forwarding-table family mpls	mpls forwarding-table print
show ldp database	mpls Continue reading

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Worth Reading: Finding Bugs in C and C++ Compilers

Something to keep in mind before you start complaining about the crappy state of network operating systems: people are still finding hundreds of bugs in C and C++ compilers.

One might argue that compilers are even more mission-critical than network devices, they’ve been around for quite a while, and there might be more people using compilers than configuring network devices, so one would expect compilers to be relatively bug-free. Still, optimizing compilers became ridiculously complex in the past decades trying to squeeze the most out of the ever-more-complex CPU hardware, and we’re paying the price.

Keep that in mind the next time a vendor dances by with a glitzy slide deck promising software-defined nirvana.

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Worth Reading: Finding Bugs in C and C++ Compilers

Something to keep in mind before you start complaining about the crappy state of network operating systems: people are still finding hundreds of bugs in C and C++ compilers.

One might argue that compilers are even more mission-critical than network devices, they’ve been around for quite a while, and there might be more people using compilers than configuring network devices, so one would expect compilers to be relatively bug-free. Still, optimizing compilers became ridiculously complex in the past decades trying to squeeze the most out of the ever-more-complex CPU hardware, and we’re paying the price.

Keep that in mind the next time a vendor dances by with a glitzy slide deck promising software-defined nirvana.

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The Most Volatile IT Spending Year Is In The Rear View Mirror

The future has a nasty habit of being very hard to predict. …

The Most Volatile IT Spending Year Is In The Rear View Mirror was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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Friction Finders

Do you have a door that sticks in your house? If it’s made out of wood the odds are good that you do. The kind that doesn’t shut properly or sticks out just a touch too far and doesn’t glide open like it used to. I’ve dealt with these kinds of things for years and Youtube is full of useful tricks to fix them. But all those videos start with the same tip: you have to find the place where the door is rubbing before you can fix it.

Enterprise IT is no different. We have to find the source of friction before we can hope to repair it. Whether it’s friction between people and hardware, users and software, or teams going at each other we have to know what’s causing the commotion before we can repair it. Just like with the sticking door, adding more force without understand the friction points isn’t a long-term solution.

Sticky Wickets

Friction comes from a variety of sources. People don’t understand how to use a device or a program. Perhaps it’s a struggle to understand who is supposed to be in charge of a change control or a provisioning process. It could even Continue reading

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Tempered Networks Tempts Users With Free Remote Access Offering

Tempered Networks lets you set up encrypted remote access for 25 devices for free with its new Airwall Teams offering.

The post Tempered Networks Tempts Users With Free Remote Access Offering appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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Weekend Reads 020521

Despite WHOIS’s relevance, however, the dawn of new data regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) seemingly disconnected the ties that bind domains to their owners

Microsoft on Wednesday shared more specifics about the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) adopted by the attackers behind the SolarWinds hack to stay under the radar and avoid detection, as cybersecurity companies work towards getting a “clearer picture” of one of the most sophisticated attacks in recent history.

In this post, I’ll look at hash-based signatures, a family of post-quantum algorithms that could be a good match for DNSSEC from the perspective of infrastructure stability.

Although spoofing has been around for a long time, there has been no longitudinal study of how it is changing over time. Prior studies of DNS spoofing explored how it works, particularly the use of spoofing for censorship.

The number of data breaches declined by half last year — to less than 4,000 events — yet the number of leaked records more than doubled, as did the number of breaches that included a ransomware component, according to an annual analysis of breach events by Risk Based Security.

Starlink is satellite internet access from SpaceX, one of Elon Musk’s Continue reading

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How to use the lslogins command: 2-Minute Linux Tips

In this Linux tip, learn how to use the lslogins command. It provides some useful details on user accounts and logins. In its simplest form, you could just type lslogins, but without using sudo, some of the details you'll probably want to see won't be available because the files in which it's stored won't be readable.

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Heavy Networking 560: Moving Big Data Sets From Far-Off Locations

Construction sites generate tons of data but often lack network connectivity. Today's Heavy Networking explores how one CTO has found ways to move huge data sets to HQ and the cloud using everything from Free Space Optics to LTE to consumer broadband. There are also stories about flying drones and robot dogs, and the operational impacts of SD-WAN. Our guest is Michael Shepherd, CTO of Rogers-O’Brien Construction.

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Heavy Networking 560: Moving Big Data Sets From Far-Off Locations

Construction sites generate tons of data but often lack network connectivity. Today's Heavy Networking explores how one CTO has found ways to move huge data sets to HQ and the cloud using everything from Free Space Optics to LTE to consumer broadband. There are also stories about flying drones and robot dogs, and the operational impacts of SD-WAN. Our guest is Michael Shepherd, CTO of Rogers-O’Brien Construction.

The post Heavy Networking 560: Moving Big Data Sets From Far-Off Locations appeared first on Packet Pushers.

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How SASE Will Transform How We Do Secure Security Systems in 2021

SASE offers organizations edge computing-based security frameworks that ensure secure and holistic networking for distributed teams.

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Notes on Pushing Ansible-generated FortiOS Configs

I’m working on a project to push out configuration files to Fortigates using the ‘configuration restore’ capability in FortiOS. The configs are generated using Jinja2 templates and then restored to the remote device via SCP. This post is to collect together a few of the pitfalls and things I learned in the process. Hopefully it will help someone else out of a hole.

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Why use SCP in the first place?

I had every intention of using the FortiOS Ansible modules for this process, specifically fortinet.fortios.fortios_system_config_backup_restore. The issue with doing so is that it operates over the REST API. To use the API, you have to go on to the box and generate an API token. The issue here is that you only see the token in cleartext at the point of creation, after which it is stored cryptographically in the config. This means that on the script host you need to keep a vault with both versions – cleartext to push to the API, and cryptotext to insert into the config file you are pushing.

Instead, it is easier to enable SCP on the devices, put an admin PKI user’s public key in every config and restore over Continue reading

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Video: Finding Paths Across the Network

Regardless of the technology used to get packets across the network, someone has to know how to get from sender to receiver(s), and as always, you have multiple options:

• Almighty controller
• On-demand dynamic path discovery (example: probing)
• Participation in a routing protocol

For more details, watch Finding Paths Across the Network video.

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Video: Finding Paths Across the Network

Regardless of the technology used to get packets across the network, someone has to know how to get from sender to receiver(s), and as always you have multiple options:

• Almighty controller
• On-demand dynamic path discovery (example: probing)
• Participation in a routing protocol

For more details, watch Finding Paths Across the Network video.

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US Air Force Spends $100 Million To Accelerate Data Warehouses

We talk about big money being spent on GPU-accelerated HPC and AI systems all the time here at The Next Platform, and we have been clear that we think another area where such acceleration will take off is with databases and related analytics, and particularly with data warehouses that have trillions of rows of data. …

US Air Force Spends $100 Million To Accelerate Data Warehouses was written by Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Next Platform.

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Member News: Mali Chapter Works to Get Women Online

Lending a hand: The Mali Chapter of the Internet Society is focusing on helping women who aren’t digitally literate connect to the Internet. The chapter is providing training to help these women, including women with disabilities, earn income through online services like Facebook and WhatsApp. Participants have included small business operators, including caterers and hairdressers.

Antisocial networks: A recent survey by Internet Society chapter the Israeli Internet Association has found that about half of the people in the country refrain from responding on social networks for fear of encountering violent reactions. The survey also found that 86 percent of Israelis believe that discourse on social networks is violent, and 80 percent believe that public figures and politicians share violent discourse on social media.

Talking governance: Netherlands chapter board member Ruben Brave was recently invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the FreedomLab think tank to give a speech about Internet governance and respond to a recent position paper. He focused on recognizing human rights during debates about Internet governance. “Invest again in the explicit contribution of human rights in the re-design and management of Internet protocols by making people and resources available to knowledge institutions and invest in training for Continue reading